Base Loaded, 22 Nov – 4 Dec 2011

We started off our base training, checklist in hand, with the various safety inductions and facility familiarizations that everybody must participate in immediately. We were also finding more and more that speaking English was a greater rarity up here. When given our safety talk by the base manager, he had to call in another guy to translate. The guy who came to translate, Anton, seems to be the only guy who consistently smiles around here (besides me, of course), which doesn’t make for the happiest of environments, but have you met anyone who ever came out and actually claimed the Siberian Arctic was fun? I obviously have to change the overall tone, one smile at a time. But I digress. Nearly everyone who we would talk with throughout our base training would preface every conversation with an apology for their English. I would always remind them that it’s still probably better than our Russian. They at least knew all the tool names and procedures in broken English, which is all we really needed, although most Q&A’s were all but useless.

We were placed for the time being in the Surface Lab, the area in charge of maintenance of all sensors and hardware that wasn’t the actual downhole tool equipment. Here we would learn firsthand about all the surface systems by testing, calibrating, assembling, and disassembling them. Initially, the work was painstakingly tedious, checking the continuity and insulation of various cables, but then we got up into more interesting things, like wiring hardware, assembling sensors, setting up the rig site satellite communication system, and basically everything we’d be in charge of knowing out in the field, as combination engineers/technicians.

One of the lab workers, a cute blonde girl (and possibly the only one on the base at that point, because ALL the men would come by and flirt with her), always had music playing. This music consisted mostly of techno remixes of popular American songs, notably Lady Gaga. Of course, I would sing along to this stuff in my customary falsetto. This usually incited more of the standard giggly Russian girl reactions, though I felt they were more positive than the ones I had received in my shopping excursions. She was, up to that point, one of the easiest Russians to speak with, mostly because she was enthusiastic about knowing English better, and she was impressed that I had figured out how to read Russian Cyrillic. It really isn’t that hard, once you know the sound every character makes. It’s super phonetic in that way. She thought it was funny that I could read it without knowing what it meant. But I find many languages actually have consistent enough pronunciation rules to be able to read stuff, despite not knowing its meaning (French, Spanish, Portuguese…), with the big exception being English. Silly English, where all of our rules have several exceptions. Her favorite word that didn’t make sense was “through.” I wasn’t about to tell her about all the other ways “-ough” can end up sounding in English.

Jeff and I, the little perverts we are, started having some unintentional innuendo fun with the language stuff, to make things more enjoyable. Our lab mentor, as I will now refer to her, pronounced the word, “important” like “impotent.” I don’t blame her. I rarely get the proper syllabic stresses in Russian words on the first try, but I’d always smile when she’d explain how “impotent” a certain action or device was. There was also a moment when, after being shown how to assemble something, she then asked both of us with a smile, “Want to screw?” If she hadn’t been handing me a screwdriver at that moment, I might’ve said something I shouldn’t. Jeff and I both discussed it with big smiles on our faces later. We were both starting to feel the effects of being in a very male-dominated environment, away from any sort of dating or whatever, and it was starting to take its toll on our conversation topics, which turned more and more to discussions about women. It made me wonder at what point I’d get my first vacation back to the US.

It also doesn’t help that this whole industry is filled with innuendo, as far as the terms go. Some of my favorite industry standards: “Rate of Penetration,” “Stick-up,” “Nut Plug,” and “Pull-out-of-hole.” Ok, I’m sorry. But I’m a guy!

Our first Thursday on the base was American Thanksgiving. People from home asked if I would be celebrating it in Russia. There is no Thanksgiving in Russia. Russians will celebrate it in the US, thankful that they are no longer in Russia. But it just doesn’t happen here. Luckily, I wasn’t heartbroken. I’ve never thought too highly about Thanksgiving, other than the four-day weekend from school. Since I was no longer in school and I was now working seven days a week, why think about a weekend? I just had to not get distracted by all my asshole friends on Facebook reveling in their excitement about the holiday. I hate to be a Debby Downer about Thanksgiving, but seriously, I’ve always thought traditional Thanksgiving food was sub-par (as far as type of food is concerned, not quality of preparation), except for dessert. I love pumpkin pie and everything that comes with it. But turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc. I don’t consider gourmet dining. My ideal Thanksgiving would consist of Thai food. That’s something for which I ALWAYS give thanks when I eat it. Just ask the employees at the restaurant “No Thai!” in Ann Arbor, a block from my house on Catherine Street last year. They saw me all the time, and I was always grateful.

For lunch that day, though, Jeff decided to get as close to Thanksgiving-like as he could, and he ordered chicken and potatoes. They happened to also have some cranberry-like juice, so he basically had all the mainstays except for stuffing and pumpkin pie. He kept wondering if they had turkey, but last time I checked, turkey was a North American native, and it was asking too much of Siberia to hope for anything other than chicken. But anyway, here’s what the meal looked like.

I think I had liver or something instead. They prepare their liver well here.

Everybody on the base had to go to a standing meeting in the workshop that evening. The maintenance manager carried on in both English and Russian, but the man talks so softly, I don’t even think that Russians who were more than 10 feet away from him could even understand him. The tone of his voice was so disinterested-sounded that it was difficult to tell whether he actually cared about what he was talking about. Our lab mentor made a comment to him at the end of his monologue, something to the effect of explaining that it was Thanksgiving in America. He looked over at Jeff and me, the only Americans in the room, and said, in a long, drawn-out, very sarcastic-sounding way, “Congratulations.” Everybody, including me, chuckled, and then he said, “We don’t have that in Russia.”

I said, “I know. That’s okay,” and went on my merry way.

A cute and unexpected surprise that would greet us to and from meals on several occasions was this Russian Polar Bear…

His name is Белый, pronounced kind of like “beel-y,” which is Russian for “white.” He always was looking for food or warmth, and he was in the habit of following Jeff and me back to the Surface Lab.

Apparently someone on another company’s base owned him, but I guess we just treated him really well on our side.

I’ve also noticed something negative (in my opinion) about Russian girls compared to American girls. Sure, they are on the whole quite attractive, and they dress well, but I’ve noticed that they are just physically really weak. Maybe it’s just the ones I’ve encountered, but I feel like American girls are definitely better at lifting things. This became apparent when I’d be asked to move certain items that a girl had to push and drag really hard across the floor (she didn’t even look like someone I’d consider "weak"), and then I’d lift it and realize it’s not all that heavy. Plenty of American girls I know would not have a problem carrying it. Maybe here they’re just always used to men being more chivalrous and doing the heavy lifting for them; maybe they didn’t get enough of the proper nutrients growing up; and/or maybe they might not be of that independent American woman mindset of, “I can do this myself. I don’t need a man.” I have thus determined that I like that about American women. I like that they can be strong and kick some ass. As long as they’re not stronger than I am. :-) That's not to say I won't help a girl out if she needs some heavy lifting done. I'm just saying a like strong(er) women.


I hope that last paragraph didn't just make me look like too much of an asshole, but I think this is just another example of one of my "Fun Observations Upon Which I've Drawn Hasty Generalizations that I Don't Necessarily Believe Completely."

I was somewhat disappointed to also learn that I would not be back in America for any portion of the holidays. I had heard from various higher-ups in various positions (not my own manager, who was on vacation) that we would be able to take a vacation home around New Year’s time. I also saw on my scheduling that I was set to leave Vankor at about December 28^th. I figured, “Hey cool, I get to go home a couple weeks at that point.” It made sense to me to get a break at that point, because after that, I’d have another month before ENG-1 and then nine weeks of ENG-1 without a break. But my manager came back from vacation and shot me down. I do get a break, but I have to stay in Krasnoyarsk. He suggested going skiing. But unfortunately I’m a bit of a skiing snob and the Krasnoyarsk skiing resort only has about 1000 vertical feet, which won’t do it for me, especially since the last place I went skiing was here.

Sickle Couloir (left side strip of snow) on Horstman Peak, Sawtooth Range, Idaho

Oh well, this just means I get nearly a month of vacation from Mid-April onward. On this first trip, I will be hitting up a few locations in the US. After this, though, my breaks are going to span the whole world. There are so many places to go on my list… Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Machu Picchu, skiing in the Alps and the Canadian Rockies and even Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held, climbing mountains on every continent… to name just a few. But I need a hamburger of the size and juicyness that only an American joint can offer. The borsch here is good, but man, I was thinking about the double major burger from Quickie Burger in Ann Arbor, or anything from Big Jud’s (which I stupidly didn’t manage to make it to before leaving Boise, grrrrrr), or …. Okay I have to stop because I’m suddenly starving. Time to go eat something.

Hardcore in Vankor!! 21 November 2011

This is unacceptable, I know. Over three weeks without posting. So I’m not so good at this blogging thing. Or perhaps I just have stuff to do. I guess it’s just lower on my priority list than learning my job, learning Russian, keeping up with US pop culture and politics (one of my pre-expat promises to myself), and exercising. I thought I would be better at posting a lot of short things often, but my inability to take an observation/experience and say, “Oh yeah! I’d better blog about it now!” keeps hindering me.

I’ll have you know, though, that in my absence from the blogosphere I have in fact managed to be quite productive. I’ve completed all the online coursework required of me to complete “pre-school” and I still have more than two months until my ENG-1 school starts in mid-February. I also have been getting used to life on a rig in the arctic, where internet pages load at dial-up speed, among other things. And, I’m trying to memorize and retain at least 100 new Russian words a week. That’s not too lofty of a goal is it? More on my other “things-to-accomplish-while-secluded-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” later…

So, on the 21^st of November, we (Jeff and I) woke up bright and early to catch our cab to the airport. Because of our Russian deficiencies and our never having chartered to a rig before, we were joined up with a Russian technician, Ilgiz, who would lead us through all the tough spots. He was in the cab that picked us up and he pretty much made our always-hectic experience bearable.

There’s something about trunk space in the cars in Russia that makes me feel like I pack too heavily. I even left my large duffle in the apartment and was down to just my backpacking pack and laptop bag, but the cab driver had to work hard to stuff our belongings in the small hatchback of the car (not as embarrassing as the cab ride when we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, when my large duffle had to sit by itself in the front seat). I’ve definitely learned my lesson and will be eschewing my large duffle for something much smaller (or nothing at all) upon my return to the US. I’ll probably get a nice shoulder-strap kind of bag that would basically be a large laptop bag with room for more stuff. The backpacks we got to carry our laptops don’t have enough space for much more than the laptop and some papers, and I carry it in my hand anyway, because I already have a backpack. That just about covers the packing topic

So, anyway, we got to the airport, Cheremshanka, which is different than Krasnoyarsk’s main airport, Yemilyenova. It might as well be the same airport, because it happens to be right next door. But Cheremshanka just handles the little planes, and we of course are riding a charter flight on a prop plane. Woohoo! There’s something about aging prop planes that makes me just want to jump out of a plane without a parachute, because I might fare better that way. But seriously, these are Antonov 24’s and they are the ol’ Russkij Standard. It’s like taking a Greyhound bus in the air.

There were about five separate charter flights taking off to Vankor this morning, and Ilgiz thankfully was there to let us know when our flight had been called to board. As had become standard in the non-metropolis cities, upon going through security, the “concourse” was just a waiting room, and these waiting rooms have become increasingly smaller. Security, I think, was also just a formality here. Since this wasn’t a commercial airline flight, and we were all just going to work, I don’t think it really mattered what we brought with us, as long as they would allow it into Vankor. Everyone in the waiting room, save for one tall pretty woman in a mini skirt and high-heeled boots (presumably someone with a desk job, but you never know…), was a tired-looking man. Nobody seemed excited to be ending their days off and heading back to the arctic to spend the end of the year. I wondered why... I, for one, was giddy as a schoolgirl.

It’s the little things in life—like going further north than you’ve ever gone (nearly 70°), or riding in a helicopter for the first time—that really make it special. Even though the journey was probably going to be a logistical drag, as most things are out here, I was looking forward to some special experiences. When they called our flight, I excitedly tried to be the first person on the bus, not that it mattered, really. We sped along, down the tarmac, and came upon a real beauty.

Not the actual plane (it was slightly less perfect looking). I think this is just a plastic miniature...  But the type is the important thing!

The baggage system was pretty simple: wait in line and then toss yours into the behind-the-cockpit cargo area. Then we had to walk around and board the plane from the back. Still failing at being pushy and shovy (I’m going to make it a real word, damnit!) in these Russian lines, I was one of the last to get my bag into cargo and board the plan. So of course I got to sit at the back. That gave me a great view of the plane as a whole, and from the inside, save for the round windows, it really did look like a Greyhound bus. The windows were perfect circles, instead of the modern ellipsoid, and they were complete with little curtains instead of the standard sliding cover. The overhead storage spaces, like a bus, were open-shelf-like instead of shut-able bins. I knew this was going to be a good time. At least our stewardess was attractive, which has also been a pretty consistent Russian standard.

The window was pretty scraped up, so it was difficult to get any good pictures looking out, but I would soon find out that it wouldn’t matter, since the normal view out of the plane was either the white snow or the white clouds. Here we are getting ready to take off. For a moment it seemed as if our engines weren’t going to work properly and that they needed to be manually jumped.

I don't think that cord will be long enough....

When the plane set off down the runway, I was confused because I figured it probably needed to go faster to actually lift off, even though it was a prop plane and all. Jeff, too, was slightly confused, having served for 4 years in the Air Force and knowing a thing or two about flying. I wondered if the engines really were broken and couldn't operate at full capacity. We slowed down at the end of the runway, luckily, and then the plane did a U-turn. As it turned out, there just weren't any taxiways, so we had to taxi down the runway in one direction to take off in the other. Then the propellers really went wild, and we actually gained significant speed and took off.

Hey, look! The Arctic!

Like I said, there wasn’t much to look at below us for the 2 to 3 hour flight. It was white, and there were a lot of frozen bodies of water, suggesting that this huge area was all just muddy marshland in the summer time. That’ll be annoying and buggy, come June, or whenever their “summer” starts here. Our in-flight meal consisted of a good-sized container of pâté with not enough things on which to spread it. I like pâté, but I wasn’t about to eat it plain, so I ended up just wasting half the container after exhausting the various bread and cracker resources on my food tray. Jeff didn’t even eat his once I told him it was liver. At least there’s no fear of going hungry when flying in Russia.

I tried to sleep for most of the flight, because I hadn’t really slept the last night. But before I knew it, we were touching down on the snowy runways in Igarka. Igarka is the nearest town to Vankor Field (in Russia, 80 miles is "near"). It was once the site of a major gulag and the destination of a quickly-abandoned railroad-building attempt. It is now known as the main aerial access point to the area’s oil industry and for its award-winning permafrost museum. I fear I will never spend enough time in Igarka to get to see this museum. Upon deplaning, we were met by several people who split us up and escorted us to our helicopters, big orange ones. They looked sturdy enough...

Upon boarding the helicopter, I decided the look on the outside was just for show. If somebody had shown me pictures of the inside and outside of this helicopter side-by-side, I wouldn’t have believed they were the same vehicle. There was a bench against the left and right walls, along which we all--twenty of us--had to squeeze. I made the mistake of picking the end, thinking half my body what get some breathing room from this decision. Unfortunately, I spent the length of the flight struggling to stay in my seat. They squeezed the absolute maximum amount of people they could onto these choppers.

Looking back at our plane from the helicopter. That's the noontime sun up there.

The takeoff was another funny thing. It took awhile for the pilot to decide that he actually wanted to go, but then when he did, we did some moves I wasn't expecting. First we started to lift off vertically, which I expected, but then we came back down for a bit, unexpectedly. The chopper turned, facing down the airport runway, and then, like a plane, it began to speed forward along the ground, before lifting off diagonally as if it needed all that forward momentum to fly properly. Jeff also didn't recognize this as standard procedure. Of course, the US Air Force has been known to utilize slightly more advanced flight technology than what we saw here today. In Soviet Russia, procedure standardizes YOU!

So my first ever helicopter ride wasn’t all that exciting. I didn’t get to look out the window, because the bench faced inward and I didn’t feel like twisting my neck around every time I wanted to look out, so I leaned forward, putting my head in my lap, and tried to get some rest.

Two hours later, we landed at Vankor. The 2 pm sun was not very high, as I expected. I got my first taste of arctic “weather” when an unexpected approaching helicopter flew not more than twenty feet above my head and whipped up a bunch of snow into my face. That woke me up. We entered the little guard house, passing through security, where we had to have both a laptop pass and a personal pass, and then we found Ilgiz on the other side, who had been separated from us in between the plane and helicopters. He led us out to the company’s Mitsubishi truck that we would take to the base.

It turned out to be a rather long drive. Vankor is the largest oil field in East Siberia, and despite having only begun in 2008, the facilities were extensive. It was apparently one of the largest construction projects in all of Russia, and it was even important enough that Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The field is 40 km long, and the speed limit on its roads is only about 40 kph, so it was slow-going, because our base was at a different end of the complex than the Rosneft/Vankorneft hotel-like building near the guardhouse and helipads. We passed rig after rig, each one giving off a mystifying gas flare. “This is it,” I told myself. Pipelines of all sizes lined and crossed over the road. Massive trucks with incredibly-sized tires for the purposes of transporting who-knows-what drove past along the road.  

We reached our base, and it was a pretty good-sized site. Most every building was a trailer, except for the main workshop area. This was going to be like Hollywood!!!! Except that I would not only live in a trailer, but I would work in a trailer too. We were directed to the DD (Directional Driller) Coordinator’s office (trailer) to receive our instructions on what to do next. We were handed our linens and told where our living unit was (the trailer right next door). We had to stay on the base to complete a specific amount of training requirements before being let loose to a rig (and another identical working unit (trailer) and living unit (trailer)). Ok, so living in a trailer isn’t all that bad except for A) whenever someone enters and leaves they slam the door shut, which shakes the whole thing and makes it impossible to fall asleep, and B) there’s no toilet, and the options are one of the three stalls of real toilets in the workshop building (one female seat, one male seat, and a urinal) or what I will cover in the next paragraph.

This is where I bring up toilet talk. Warning, the next image may scare you. Our other option was this thing, which was a hundred yard walk from the trailer:

It smells nastier than it looks. People tend to use these sh*tholes to smoke while they’re relieving themselves, apparently, because the smell of cigarette smoke hits you almost as strongly as that ripe sewage scent. It wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for that the smell seems to follow you on the way out. I would be fine with going in, breathing through my mouth for a little bit, and then GTFO, but the reason the smell is so bad is because it is literally in the air, attaching itself to the body the longer it’s in there. I actually appreciate the arctic wind for this, because I can open up my jacket, spread my arms, and hope that the smell will be carried away after exiting one of these. But I can’t help but feel like I smell like it later on, and I hope it’s just all in my head or that other people don’t end up smelling me too.

The solution, obviously, was to avoid the sh*thole. So, for number 2, I’d make the journey into the workshop building, where I had to don coveralls, hard hat, and safety glasses, but it was a small price to pay to not smell like Andy Dufresne probably did after his escape from Shawshank. And for number one, I would’ve been fine just going outside somewhere, but the Russians already gave me enough crap about my blatant disregard for excessively warm clothing, that the idea of getting caught out in the open with my manhood out would probably get me a stern talking-to. I didn’t feel like having one of those so early in my employment, so I adopted Jeff’s Air Force-tested method of peeing in a bottle. This was really only used at nighttime, to avoid the hassle of getting out of bed, and getting warm clothes on just to take a leak. And I always have to pee like a racehorse in the morning.

Later, at the rig, the only option was a sh*thole (a smaller one than in the picture, where people often missed (number 2 as well as 1)), and there were no water bottles provided, so I man up and do it the way God intended.

Okay, enough about poo. Back to our adventure!

We got our little tour of the base, and then we got to go pick up our personal supply of PPE (personal protective equipment). And damn, do I look good!!!

The parkas are so big and warm, I really don’t have to wear anything else. This was tested and proven during a few nighttime sh*thole trips (pre-bottle usage) in which I could be found trudging along through the snow in just my boots, shorts and a parka. The parka goes down to my knees, so I probably looked naked to any passersby. There was only one, and he said something to me in Russian before I ducked away to my trailer.

Then, we went to bed at a decent time, ready to wake up bright and early and get our base training on!